Tag Archive

It’s September! holidays over, kids back to school, I always see it as the ‘business new year’. We’ve hopefully had some time to forget about the business but now it’s time to lay down plans for improving your business. We should also be thinking about how we can improve and support ourselves, after all as business owners we’re driving the …

How do I Pick a Coach? When I went to source a coach some years ago I found it really difficult. My big obstacle was finding the right one who had the necessary expertise for the various areas I wanted to work on. Other big questions I had were: Will this be totally confidential? Will they understand my business and …

Ego in a leader is like a bad smell, it gets detected miles away. Just think for you how unattractive the ego trait is in someone you know who’s world centres completely around them? To be honest ego centric is not something exclusive to high powered leaders, in fact we all suffer from it to varying degrees. It’s based on …

This is the first in a series of posts on the minds of a leader that make them who they are. I heard an inspiring interview on the radio last week. On September 2, 2013, at the age of sixty-four, Diana Nyad emerged onto the sands of Key West after swimming 111 miles, nation to nation, Cuba to Florida, in an …

‘Why do our attempts to deal with the challenges of our time so often fail? Why are we stuck in so many quagmires today? The cause of our collective failure is that we are blind to the deeper dimension of leadership and transformational change. This “blind spot” exists not only in our collective leadership but also in our everyday social …

He realised that whilst the issue with one of his managers was important, in the scale of things it was just another issue that he would have to deal with. Overall, his company was back making good consistent profits, his market share was increasing, things with the family were going well, especially having taken action on his ageing parents as a result of a previous Po7 group discussion, and he was doing pretty well himself – he had lost a stone, was bac

Each Power of Seven group does a leadership retreat every year. The first one is called CLARITY. It’s all about getting clarity on your professional and personal life and ensuring work/life alignment. What’s the point in being successful in business and not in life and vice versa. After a CLARITY retreat you have a vision and strategy for YOUR future. …

When I went online for some interesting photos to put with this blog post I came across the Irish Times headline ‘Leaders fall but others rise up and inspire’. It says it all. Here’s a few quotes from that online article: Men who would be captains in any other era and another who will lead them now. “It was 25 …

A recent Power of Seven meeting by the Business development group at the City Bin Co. in Galway. A fantastic display of internal and external customer service initiatives. Rock on City Bin, what a great example of an Irish SME becoming a global leader in their sector.

Many Power of Seven groups are doing goal setting at the moment. It gives everyone something to aim for and also provides context for that member in their group. As I was out running the other morning an idea came to mind (I usually get at least one good idea or break through when running). 🏃 The challenge I was contemplating …

This is from an article of Brian Arthur’s in the Harvard Business Review. “Imagine you are milling about in a large casino with the top figures in the high-tech-the Gates, Gerstners, and Groves of their industries. Over at one table, a game is starting called Multimedia. Over at another is a game called Web Services. In the corner is Electronic …

Being an employed Managing Director is not without its challenges, such as: being undermined by your employer (CEO, Owner, board, etc) working harder than most yet not having equity (or enough) in the business. not having ultimate decision making authority doubting yourself because you were not the entrepreneur feeling isolated corporate politics lacking certainty that all this hard work is …

The Po7 Story

Started accidentally in 2005, Barry Walsh believed some of his clients should be talking. He invited them and a few others to dinner. As Yogi Bear said "it was impossible to have a conversation, there was so many people talking". The group thought it a good idea to meet on a regular basis, and so they did, every second month over the last nine years. Barry was encouraged by that group to set up other groups to help other business owners. The Power of Seven was formally born and many groups have started since with many more to come too. Barry's vision is to make the Po7 available to every business owner in the world.